


Thrown in Reverse

by slipstream



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipstream/pseuds/slipstream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Casey cuts the roof off the truck, Donnie gets eaten by a mutated muscle car, and Casey realizes that the ice they're both skating on is a lot blacker than he first thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrown in Reverse

“You’re a real _ass_ sometimes, Casey Jones.”

Donatello is staring at the truck—or rather, what used to be the roof of the truck, cut free and resting overturned on the barn’s cracked concrete floor—his hands low and curled into tight fists the size of Casey’s head.

The insult isn’t anything new, nor is Donnie’s anger (at himself, at the truck, at having to work on the truck with _Casey Jones_ , at everything that’s happened these past few months that’s beyond their control or ability to fix), but something about the way he spits it, the gap in his teeth making the s sound go sharp and shrill, makes Casey’s fingers tighten reflexively on the powered-down angle grinder.

“Yeah, well you’re no peach yourself, _buttmunch_.” He twirls the grinder with a reckless flourish, grin cocksure and inviting a patronizing lecture on tool safety peppered with enough passive aggressive hints at whatever’s set off _today’s_ little snit fit for Casey to get a better feel for the ice they’re both skating on. It’s black ice, that much Casey knows for sure. Rough and dangerously thin, the water beneath cold and bottomless.

Donnie doesn’t take the bait, though, just stands there with this disconcertingly naked expression that’s half incensed betrayal, half badly-hidden disappointment. Like Casey’s gone and broken something precious.

“What, that’s it? One letter and done? Not gonna call me a ‘cad’? Or a ‘chum bucket’? How ‘bout ‘crusted-over chunk of cock snot’? I think that’s a good one, personally.” C is a pretty easy, even if Casey sometimes gets mixed up when different letters have the same phoneme.

("I don’t know what the fuck that means, _quail dick_ , it sure as shit doesn’t start with _p_.”

“P-H-O-N-E-M-E. Same root word as ‘phone.’ It’s the smallest, most basic unit of sound in a language, you _retrograde_ , and that’s exactly what you are. Small, basic, and nothing but talk.”)

Donnie’s glare screams murder, but he stays accusingly silent.  

Given all the times Casey has wished Donnie would just shut _up_ already, it’s amazing how well this pisses him off.

“Whatever, dude. Don’t bother telling me what I fucked up _this_ time.” Casey flips his safety goggles back into place and squints down at the shiny patch of freshly-polished metal so he doesn’t have to look at Donnie’s stupid face.

There’s still an ugly, obvious lump where the roof struts used to attach, but it’s getting better. Getting smoother with each shower of sparks.

“I mean,” Casey says to the stray chicken that pokes its way into the barn long after Donatello has left. “It’s not like I even _care_.”

 

*

 

Casey hadn’t had that many toys as a little kid. It burned sometimes, the way a lot of things did when he realized they were never going to be within his reach, but then he’d always preferred running around outside with the kids on his block, racking up skinned knees and all kinds of trouble while they came up with new games to play with whatever motley collection of sports equipment they could scrape together. On days when it rained or when his dad wanted him close he’d been generally content to scribble in his notebooks with one ear bent towards whatever game or cop show the old man was watching, or guide his sister’s small hands as they fumbled over her own small collection of toys, relishing in each slobbery giggle.

He did have his fair share of action figures, though. Some comic books, half a shelf of secondhand manga (way more Sailor Moon than he will ever, _ever_ admit to Raph), and a shoebox full of Hot Wheels. The cars were another rainy day staple, among them a battered Plymouth Prowler with metallic purple paint, ugly in a way that just _begged_ to have firecrackers strapped to it and launched off elaborately steep ramps over and over again until the wheels popped off and the baseboards were scratched and dented under the barrage of spectacular crashes.

Casey had loved that fucking car. Loved the long, slightly rounded wedge of its body, the widely-set front wheels, like an animal, low and ready to pounce. Loved the knifeslash abruptness of the windshield, the molded hollow of the interior just big enough to jam a marble into, the extra weight making the car hurtle like lightning through the slightly-warped loop-de-loop of his solitary stretch of track. Loved imagining what it would be like to drive it for real, how _good_ the wind would feel through his hair as he held the pedal flat on the floor, the engine roar rattling all through the frame and up into his bones.

(This was Before, when the fights were quiet and infrequent enough that the feel of the floor quivering under heavy footsteps wasn’t something that made his joints lock and his palms slick.)

“I heard you and D finally got the ol’ rust bucket running,” Mikey says, his ridiculous farmer’s hat swapped out for a frilled gingham apron covered with flour and a Pollock of old stains. He’s been on a quiche kick lately, trying to make use of all of the fresh eggs they get. He even makes his own crust dough, which thanks to his many experiments with pizza is more or less edible. “So when are you gonna take us all out for a spin?”

“Never,” interjects Leo from the kitchen doorway, his weight braced too casually against the door jamb .   “That thing’s a deathtrap.”

“Yeah,” says Mikey. “A freaking _sweet_ looking deathtrap.”

Next to Casey at the cutting board, April rolls her eyes. “Mikey, it doesn’t even have any _seat belts_.”

“Hey!” Casey protests. “I’m a good driver.”

April raises a withering eyebrow. “Oh really? Try telling that to the mailbox.”

“We have a mailbox?” Leo sounds only slightly less surprised than he did when he found out he’d been unconscious for over three months.

“Not anymore.”

There’s a hint of smile at the corner of April’s mouth as she says it, though, dimpling her cheek. Casey wishes he could kiss her there, or maybe brush against it with his thumb. It looks soft. Comfortable.

April catches him staring and nudges him hard with her elbow, both cheeks dimpled now. “Back to work, Jones. Those carrots aren’t gonna peel themselves.”

Casey Jones has eaten a disturbing amount of salad in the past four months. He blames it entirely on the turtles.

“The van doesn’t have seat belts,” Mikey points out. “Least not in the back where we always sit.”

“That’s because there aren’t any seats to belt _into_ ,” Leo grunts, giving up on the door jamb to ease himself down onto a stool. Everyone pretends not to see him carefully stretch out his leg. “Besides, the van’s already proven itself worthy in battle.”

Mikey’s expression sours, then brightens.

“HEY DONNIE!” he bellows, loud enough to be heard all the way out to the barn, let alone the living room where Donnie’s holed up with Raph, the two of them working through some brotherly disagreement with a good old-fashioned Pong tournament and a lot of swearing.

“ _WHAT_?!”

Casey grins down at the pile of sliced radishes. From the sound of it, Raph is kicking Donnie’s ass.

“Tell Leo that it’s totally cool for Casey to give me a ride in the truck!”

“ _None_ of us is riding in the truck!” Donnie snaps. “If Casey wants to flip himself over in a ditch and _die_ , that’s his own goddamned busi— _shit!_ ” There’s an angry chorus of buzzes and bloops from the television, followed by Raph’s victorious cackle.

“ _Jeeze_.” Mikey looks up at Casey, eyes round and orange mask deeply creased. “What crawled up his shell and died?”

Casey shrugs and pops a wedge of tomato into his mouth. “Dude, what the hell _hasn’t_?”

 

*

 

It’s his turn to take the trash out, which Casey thinks is unfair, given how much he helped with dinner, but with six teenagers living under one roof with little to no contact with the outside world they’ve had to draw up a schedule to keep the chores all in line and arguments theoretically to a minimum.

Casey doesn’t spot the rip in the overstuffed bag until he’s within sight of the burn barrel, too late to stop it from splitting open completely. “Aw, come _on_ ,” he groans as the wind scatters most of the cardboard trash, leaving a heap of empty cans, soggy paper towels, and stray vegetable peelings at his feet. With the tattered remnants of the bag as an impromptu set of gloves he’s able to scoop up the worst of it, but it takes five minutes to track down the last of the toilet paper rolls and frozen pizza boxes.

Wherever Mr. O’Neil is— _whatever_ he is, now—he’s probably pissed as hell that they don’t recycle, but with so many government resources focused on keeping the Kraang infestation contained to Manhattan it’s not like they have much of a choice in the matter.

The last of the pizza boxes makes a strange crinkling sound sound when Casey picks it up. There’s something wadded up inside, and some combination of boredom, disregard for his own personal safety, and way too many Columbo reruns during his formative years makes him reach in after it, his fingers pulling out what is unmistakably a crumpled sheet of the butcher paper Donnie has been using for blueprints.

Instinctively Casey looks over his shoulder back towards the barn, but Donnie’s makeshift lab is dark and quiet, the old wood glimmering faintly silver in the half light of the low waxing moon. It’s too dim to make out what’s written on the paper, but Donnie going so far to bury his trash is odd enough that Casey tucks the discarded blueprints into the pocket of his hoodie to examine later.

Back in the living room, April has gotten in on the Pong tournament action, and judging by Raph’s hunched shoulders and the tense way he’s leaning towards the tiny TV he’s finally getting his comeuppance.

“It’s not fair!” he growls through gritted teeth. “You with your five fingers.”

“Didn’t know that mattered with joysticks,” says April, her bored tone betrayed by the Cheshire cat grin that makes her whole face glow with smug satisfaction. “But whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Raph must catch sight of Casey’s reflection on the dark screen as he passes behind the couch. “Yo Casey, a little help here?”

“Hey, no line jumping!” shouts Mikey from the dining room. Ice Cream Kitty hisses her agreement. “I’ve already got dibs on the winner!”

“Screw a guy for wanting a little moral support!” Raph grunts as April delivers another devastating serve that he only barley volleys.

Casey wants to stay, but he’s also on a mission of his own. “Gimme five minutes, dude!” he says, bounding up the stairs two at a time. “Gotta piss first.”

Donnie’s room is empty when he passes it, as is Leo’s. Probably out in the woods doing ninja stuff, or up on the roof trying to hash out some stutterstart of a plan to deal with the Kraang. Casey _does_ need to use the bathroom, but his curiosity over what Donnie could have seen fit to hide even as he threw it away burns more insistently than his bladder, so he makes a quick detour to his own room to examine it in better light.

With the door shut securely behind him, Casey sits cross-legged on the floor and smooths the butcher paper flat. It’s a set of complicated schematics, which is unsurprising, but what gives Casey a jolt is the central figure: a blown-up version of a drawing of the truck Casey had first shown Donnie back in January, back when the heaps of snow and the farmhouse’s drafty insulation had kept them all cramped together in the living room for days at a time.

With the turtle’s vulnerability to cold Casey had been responsible for dragging home most of the firewood, and April’s appreciation and daydreams of his very own hot rod had been one of the few things keeping the hot, frustrating scratch of cabin fever at bay. Donnie had openly mocked his design then, clicking his tongue as he pointed out the undersized wheels and suboptimally placed intake manifold, but here it is, copied over in near-exact detail seemingly from memory.

It’s still recognizably an old pick-up, but drawn out low and smooth, its highlights picked out with white chalk. All of the tight, precise angles of Donatello’s normally protractor-heavy style have been carefully rounded out, leaving the truck a thing of long lines and dark curves, its windows completely blacked out with a dense scribbling of carpenter’s pencil.

It looks, Casey hates to admit, pretty fucking ace.

Even with the roof still on.

The margins of the blueprints are almost completely filled with notes on all of the systems and upgrades hidden beneath the metal exterior. Most of it is illegible—Donnie uses careful, oversized block print when writing anything the rest of them need to read, but in all other situations he tends to default to something that’s half kanji, half chicken scratch—but Casey can make out snatches of it. Something about tinting film and an A.I.-assisted driving system to compensate for reduced visibility. But _why_ would...

“HURRY IT UP, WILL YA, CASE? I’M _DYING_ DOWN HERE!”

Casey jerks out of his train of thought with a start. “JUST A SEC!” he shouts back, hastily folding up the blueprint and shoving it into his nightstand drawer, alongside his notebook and the few personal items he’d had on him when they fled the city, his last few connections to home.

 

*

 

“I know what you’re up to, Jones.”

When Casey looks in the rear view mirror, Donnie is little more than a silhouette neatly tucked in with the groceries, a lifetime’s practice making the night shadows stick to him easy as breathing.

It’d be just as easy to forget he was even back there if it weren’t for the constant _whining_.

“You _always_ get to drive,” he hisses, inches from Casey’s ear, massive finger jamming pointedly into the back of his seat. “I wonder _why_.”

It’s all Casey can do not to swing the van purposefully into a pothole. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe because a giant turtle driving a hippie bus seems a _little suspicious!_ ”

Despite all rumors to the contrary, Casey Jones isn’t a meathead. He may be terrible at most things academic, but outside of the classroom and its rigid grid of desks his brain feels freer, more his own. He’d memorized the Vikings’ playbook before the tryouts results were even posted, had expanded it threefold before alien invasions and mutated vigilantes living below the streets of New York started eating up most of his free time. Sure he tends to default to brute force, but he can recognize when something more delicate is needed, something slippery and involving a lot of complicated passes, pinpoint sticking, and quick movements that fake out the other guy, leaving the way to the goal clear.

Still, it’s not like it takes a genius to figure out why Donnie insists on tagging along on these little jaunts to town, even if it means lurking alone for hours in the back of a parked van that still smells vaguely of patchouli over 45 years after Woodstock.

“Will you both shut _up_ ,” April groans from the passenger seat, massaging her temples with one hand. Her headaches have been getting worse, an uncomfortable reminder of the war they have no idea how to fight, let alone win. “You’ve been sniping at each other for almost twenty miles. Can’t we just have a nice, _quiet_ drive through the country for once?”

Donnie’s stammered repentance is embarrassingly immediate, but Casey can’t say that he doesn’t enjoy the silence that follows. April shoots them both a relieved grin, finally relaxing into her seat as the rhythmic rumble of the van’s diesel engine takes the place of the long-busted radio.

This far out from town other cars are rare but not unheard of, so Casey doesn’t think twice about the bright headlights that slide out behind a dark curve in the road. They remind him of Donnie’s eyes deep into a battle, the nictating membrane down and moon-bright, and just as he’s thinking for the thousandth time how cool that would look with his _own_ mask the low muscle car leaps forward with a roar of speed and hits them hard enough to knock the whole world askew.  

“What the hell?” Donnie says from the back, just as the car hits them again. Casey sees white.

“Pull over!” April shouts, just outside of his tunnel vision. “Casey, just pull over!”

There’s a sound like stone jaws ripping through steel, louder than anything Casey’s ever heard, and they’re spinning out of control, everything screaming and tipping off-center as Casey scrabbles desperately at the wheel, trying to right them again.

He wishes the feeling weren’t so familiar.

 

*

 

The road whips beneath him in a snaking blur, the Kraang-enhanced engine shooting purple sparks and humming ominously like an overloaded transformer. The accelerator is maxed out, the eye of the turbo boost glaring at him accusingly, but Donnie had said to save it as a last resort. They hadn’t had a chance to test out the modifications they’d made to the fuel system, and despite Donnie’s blasé assurances to the rest of the gang it’s just as likely to blow up and take Casey Jones with it as it is to shoot him off the edge of the mountain road and into fucking outer space.

The hulking _thing_ ahead of him shifts gears, the sound of it nauseatingly organic, and that brief hiccup in speed is all Casey needs to catch up.

He rams into the back fender hard enough to make Doc squawk and flap angrily back in her cage. The monster wearing Donnie’s face _howls_ with glee.

(Donnie’s phone had still been on when it swallowed him, the sounds of crunching bone and hoarse screaming and something Casey would only recognize afterwards as metal pushing through flesh made all the more horrible by the faintly tinny reception.)

Speed Demon shakes him loose, tires squealing as it weaves back and forth across the road. Through sheer force of will, Casey edges the Turtle Racer up the seemingly endless six feet needed to ram the purple bumper again.

“Give him back, you stupid fuck!” There’s wind in his hair, cold against his sweat-damp skin despite the day’s bright spring warmth, and he can feel his terrified pulse pounding all the way down to his fingertips. “He’s not yours, _give him back!_ ”

As the race winds on he screams more things, desperate things, things too raw to remember word-for-word or ever admit to in the quiet of the farmhouse. Things his own ears aren’t ready to hear.

Luckily, the wind rips them all away, scatters them broken across the asphalt as a senseless string of consonants.

 

*

 

Only much, much later, when the roads are safe again and Donnie is bent low over the kitchen table, quiet and too exhausted to flirt as April and Leo carefully patch the ragged holes left behind where mutagenic spark plugs pushed through his shell, does Casey put two and two and pi together.

He slips off to the barn, where he stands for a long time staring down into the open-air interior that’s too dangerous for Donnie to drive, even in the dark of night. Too exposed.

Casey’s lips pull back in an involuntary snarl, jaw and arms still aching from his white-knuckled drive. He kicks at the driver’s side door. Kicks it again. Slams his foot over and over against the dull black metal until the smug face of the flaming spray-painted skull decorating it is nothing more than a dented hollow.

There are some things that—no matter how much he wants otherwise—Casey Jones can’t do. He just _can’t_.

(His dad hadn’t asked any questions when Casey came home battered and bruised from his first fight with Raphael. He hadn’t needed to.

“You’re too much like your mom for your own good sometimes,” he’d said, voice almost as rough as his broom-calloused hands, but his grip had been gentle, gentle as he tilted Casey’s aching face back towards the light.)

The door sticks when he tries to open it again. Donatello is going to complain bitterly about having to help him fix it.

Casey’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse.


End file.
